Why should businesses think creatively?

With the proliferation of creative writing courses in recent years, one question comes up again and again – can you really teach people to write creatively? The answer, I believe, is yes, you can. Given the right atmosphere, the right stimulation, good teaching skills, and a willingness on the part of those taught to be open to new experiences – and yes, I see no reason at all that someone can’t increase their creative potential.

But why should a business pay any attention to creativity, let alone invest time and money in stimulating their employees to go all out to be ‘creative’?

For one thing, it’s fun. All too often work is work and play is play, and never the two shall meet. There’s often a Puritan streak that says work has to be something undertaken with due seriousness and if it isn’t there’s something wrong. I don’t agree at all. Of course it can’t be all ‘play’ and no ‘work’, but unless people are engaged with what they do – and stimulated in their engagement – the results will at best be pedestrian – and at worst formulaic and dull.

To get the best work you need to excite. And nothing excites more than making something creative – something which engages a very different part of the brain.

Take something as simple as writing a report. It’s all too easy to simply do it the way you did it before. You reach not only for the same structures and methodologies, but also for the same stock phrases and words. It’s stale. What’s more, if it hasn’t engaged the writer, what possible chance has it of engaging the reader?  There is a need to generate ‘content’, but that content serves no purpose at all if it fails to be ‘creative’.

So the answer is that businesses do indeed need creativity – and to find ways to unlock that creativity in its people. Because without it not only is the world a duller place, but that sharp edge of creative thinking – thinking which delivers innovation and new ideas – will go very blunt and rusty without it. And without new ideas how is any business going to grow and be a success?

Nigel Lawrence